ELEPHANT AND MASTODON. 5 



embracing every period of life and the range of individual and 

 sexual varieties through which the species runs, that any safe 

 conclusions can be drawn regarding the distinctive characters of 

 anv one form. In consequence, although palaeontologists are 

 agreed on the great points relating to the construction of the head, 

 trunk, and extremities, hardly any two concur respecting the 

 number, form, and succession of the teeth in the different species 

 of Mastodon and Elephant. 



The surprising number of forms belonging to this family, em- 

 braced in the Fossil Fauna of India, and the immense abundance 

 in which their remains have been met with, have placed us perhaps, 

 with respect to the quantity and perfect condition of the materials, 

 in more favourable circumstances for the determination of the 

 Sewalik species, than has ordinarily happened to the palaeon- 

 tologist in the case of most of the other fossil Proboscidea. Of 

 five of the species to be described in the sequel, we possess nearly 

 perfect crania of each, and, in most of the instances, crania with 

 teeth of all ages, from the very young up to the adult animal, in 

 addition to a vast collection of the detached teeth and lower jaws, 

 so as to furnish us with the whole of the essential evidence requisite 

 for^the specific determination of each of these forms. The dis- 

 tinctive characters are so broadly marked, that there is hardly room 

 for a doubt being entertained in regard to them. In the course of 

 the investigation we have been led to examine the conclusions 

 which have been arrived at by writers who have preceded us upon 

 this family. The Indian species, and those previously described, 

 fossil and recent, have mutually reflected light on each other, and 

 ranged themselves into natural and allied groups. Instead, there- 

 fore, of restricting ourselves merely to a description of the Sewalik 

 fossil forms, we shall endeavour, in what follows, to trace the 

 affinities, and institute an arrangement of all the well-determined 

 species in the family. 



The results to which we have been conducted, lead us to differ 

 on certain points from the opinions most commonly entertained at 

 the present day ; for while, on the one hand, it would appear that 

 the fossil species of both Elephant and Mastodon have been unne- 



